Our Films

When Martha Wheelock founded Ishtar Films in 1976, there were few films which addressed women writers and artists, women’s works, or women’s history. Filling this void became our mission. From writers May Sarton and Kate Chopin to the very modern Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, to the brilliant, undercelebrated photographer Berenice Abbott; from Suffrage History to today’s women, Wild West Women and Ishtar Films invite you to discover Women – our history and our accomplishments.

Follow us and our films into 2020, The Centennial of Women’s Right to Vote.

Women’s History

“Women’s history is women’s right — an essential, indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long-range vision.”

Gerda Lerner, Historian

“I need to know their names those women I would have walked with…all those women who could have known me. Where in the world are their names?”

Lucile Clifton,
Former Poet Laureate of Maryland

Women in the Arts

“A book comes and says, ‘Write me.’ My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.”

Madeleine L’Engle

“The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective….”

Berenice Abbott

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”